The unstable situation in Ukraine was caused by extremists from both sides of 2 Ukraines, interested in further destabilization. In the West they try to push Russia to make some unwise moves in Eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine tries to rush straight ahead into the European Union, but Europe will not encourage the entry of Kiev to the community of western states. Thus Ukraine could remain an isolated black sheep of the herd. Meanwhile heavy mortar shells continue to fall into populated areas of the country.

Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Permanent Secretary of the French Academy and Foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences said in an interview with
www.valdaiclub.com
editor-in-chief Alexander Artamonov , that the unstable situation in Ukraine was caused by extremists from both sides of 2 Ukraines, interested in further destabilization. In the West they try to push Russia to make some unwise moves in Eastern Ukraine. In the East citizens are very afraid because they are in a situation that was previously unknown to them.

According to Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, the real provocation was to remove the Russian language as the second official in the mainly Russian-speaking eastern part of the country. This was also a pretext for extremist minds in Eastern Ukraine, who dreamed about separatism. An unacceptable situation appeared in Europe, because in the twenty-first century it is absolutely abnormal that Ukraine is falling apart. Its integrity must be maintained at all costs, and it can’t be done without a cooperation between Europe and Russia.

Speaking about assertions by some British and American experts and journalists that the Ukrainian Orange revolution will lead Russia into the Western orbit and cause Vladimir Putin’s failure, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse said that this thesis was not original. Russia has already made its “orange” democratic revolution in 1991. Without this revolution there would be no Ukrainian independence and Georgian independence either. There were 75 years of communist era. The exit from communism was very difficult, but Russia moves in this direction.

Putin is, unfortunately for him, a leader that focuses too much attention. So, as Western journalists say, we should arrange a revolution against Putin. This Anglo-Saxon thesis is repeated everywhere since 2004. They forget what happened in 1991. If there are independent countries, if the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it was Russia who decided so. Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin decided that there won’t be shooting, that they won’t force people to live a different destiny. We are in the twenty-first century, and we must together resolve a complicated situation in Ukraine.

There are quite reasonable experts, said Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, like former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who was recently in Paris. He said exactly the same: the situation can be stabilized in cooperation between Russia and the European Union. It is necessary not to put Ukraine before a dramatic choice. The country should move in both directions - to EU and Russia. Ukraine lies between Europe and Russia and both sides must cooperate for its stability.

From the point of view of a historian we should think about the realities of the past and those of geography. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is not an avid Russophile, said a quite reasonable thing: it was very good offer to Finland to keep the balance between two centers of gravity. The same can be said about Ukraine. A model of Finlandization should be on the agenda and we should work it out regarding Ukraine.

Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.